[whartung]

Honestly, it is a toy.

A very cool toy, a very sophisticated toy, but a toy nonetheless. There were in the past, and I think still today, electronic sets that let you click together modules with magnets to make circuits. It was a very handsy, easy way to play with electronics. But, in the end, that's what it was -- play and exploration.

The beauty of the concept is the easy interchange of the parts and such, and that's it downfall when you desire to render something down in to a "production" item. And by production, I mean something you're going to handle with any frequency. The ease of composability is counter to the hardening necessity for everyday use.

I supposed you could glue the parts together, but by that time whatever you made is now made of rather expensive components. Or they could offer an alternate mechanic to "realize" systems built for the longer term.

Until then, it's a wonderful toy. And that's not a bad thing.

[arendtio]

To me it feels more like, being the thing for home computing/automation, that the PC was for computing in general. A PC has not a clear single purpose, but is very modular and you have to spent some time to adjust it to your use-cases.

Similarly, the pockit has not that single use-case and you have to spent some time to adjust it to your use-case. However, especially with the Pockit-to-Pockit communication you can build so many cool things.

Maybe a PC is just a toy too, but IMHO it depends on how you use it.

[fleetwoodsnack]

>And by production, I mean something you're going to handle with any frequency. The ease of composability is counter to the hardening necessity for everyday use.

Let's remind ourselves that this is a highly advanced proof-of-concept. If the issue really is simply the integrity of materials, that can be improved, and should not be considered a long-term limitation of the underlying technology: which is frankly too sophisticated from a design and software perspective to be set aside as a toy.

After all, the difference between a "Fisher-Price" drill and a "De-Walt" drill is the integrity of materials and underlying software. It is arguably a toy aesthetically, but (in accord with your argument) it is a few carbon fiber pieces away from becoming a useful generalized personal computing tool, the same way a drill is a useful generalized power tool.

[hnfong]

I'm not imaginative enough to come up with actual scenarios, but I think it could plausibly become a "Swiss army knife" of electronics though?